His was a Failed Presidency

While menacing foreign governments threaten and challenge America’s place in the world, the President of the United States is weakening and endangering America’s greatness by threatening America’s national security, without which there can be no freedom and prosperity.

President Obama appears to be using America’s national debt crisis as an economic weapon to downsize and downgrade the United States as a world superpower. Dismantling the U.S. defense establishment makes Americans more vulnerable.

The President is ignoring the vital interests contained in a letter recently signed by the Chairman and the Vice Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and National Guard.

The letter states: “We are on the brink of creating a hollow force.” It went on to say: “Under current budgetary uncertainty, we are at grave risk of an imposed mismatch between the size of our nation’s military force and the funding required to maintain its readiness.” [See http://www.stripes.com/news/military-leaders-see-danger-in-congress-not-passing-defense-budget-1.204313]

Military leaders say the main risk is future combat readiness operations. According to AP News, the letter also stated: “Should this looming readiness crisis be left unaddressed, we will have to ground aircraft, return ships to port, and stop driving combat vehicles in training,” and indicated that training would have to be reduced by almost half of what it was just three months ago.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday: “This is not an unsolvable problem. We can do this.” He went on to say that fiscal uncertainty is one of the greatest threats to America’s national security.

If sequestration goes into effect March 1 and Congress fails to pass a 2013 defense appropriations bill that the President might agree to sign, Panetta said the military will face “huge cuts, largely that will have to come from readiness and maintenance.” [See http://www.stripes.com/news/military-leaders-see-danger-in-congress-not-passing-defense-budget-1.204313]

President Obama’s decision to make Americans more vulnerable is perhaps best illustrated in reports on 01.16.2013 that American citizens were among the hostages taken by an Al-Qaeda-linked group that seized a gas field in Algeria. This marks another terrorist attack just after the President denied requests to assist 4 Americans who needed support in fighting another Al-Qaeda linked group in Benghazi on 09.11.2012. All 4 of those Americans were murdered.

Apart from Obama’s lack of interest in U.S. security are his plans to make America more dependent on foreign energy suppliers. He has refused America’s oil and gas companies the right to go after petroleum and natural gas unmolested by “Big Government” regulations and bureaucratic red tape.

Notably however, the greatest, most valuable American commodity involves the freedoms this nation enjoys. And freedom is not free. Liberty comes at a price. While America continues to shine as a light to the world, a beacon of individual human rights, of military might, and of economic opportunity and prosperity, that light grows weaker.

What will Obama’s legacy be? A debt-ridden America, vulnerable militarily to enemy countries like China, Russia and Islamic nations in the Middle East such as Iran, who are ever more emboldened to enter into proxy wars using their state sponsored terrorist groups as well as a second tier economy where China, India, and Brazil are wealthier and more dominant globally.

Decimating U.S. military strength and economic wealth will be Obama’s legacy. And Americans looking back at this administration will comment: “His was a failed presidency.”